Several key principles underpin safeguarding to ensure the welfare and happiness of children, mainly:
- A child’s needs should be put first — always.
- It’s important to help and support children as early as possible before issues escalate and become more damaging.
- Safeguarding is everybody’s responsibility and everyone our setting will act in a timely and coordinated manner to respond to any concerns about the welfare of a child.
The Early Years Foundation Stage sets the foundation of safeguarding measures for early years providers to follow. They are based on four overarching principles, including:
- Children learn and develop best in an enabling environment
- Children are unique, learn constantly and can become resilient, capable, confident and self-assured
- Children learn and develop best in different ways and at different rates
- Children learn strength and independence from positive relationships.
How do we protect children in our care?
Everyone who works at the setting has been trained to understand how to be alert to the signs and symptoms of abuse, know how to report safeguarding concerns, and how to escalate their concerns if necessary. We are legally bound to report concerns to our local safeguarding partnership, and it is their legal responsibility from there.
The government guidance (https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/working-together-to-safeguard-children–2 and https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/419604/What_to_do_if_you_re_worried_a_child_is_being_abused.pdf) provides a national framework for all agencies working with children to join in partnership to safeguard our children effectively. We use this guidance to implement robust safeguarding policies and procedures for our setting; these outline how to respond to and record concerns about children.
All our policies align with the safeguarding policies of our local children’s safeguarding board
We will always take our responsibility to safeguard children seriously and ensure concerns are raised and responded to appropriately. Importantly, we will not be afraid to ask questions if we are concerned and endeavour to ask for clarification or query an explanation.
We will always act in the interests of the child. Accidents, incidents, attendance and existing injuries are recorded so that we can monitor children’s wellbeing and safety both in and out of the setting.
The nursery has 2 onsite Designated Safeguarding leads (DSL) and the nursery director also has DSL training. You can report any concerns to any of these people.
A full and detailed policy is available from the manager.
